This began as a fun little interpretation of someone else's joke post about a Plumbing Guild. However, I think it could be a serious proposal.

Now, let me start by saying I understand there's only 11 months left until the release of Skyrim, so all the main facets of the game are created, no major deals are being added. All our 'cool ideas' for Glaciators, Cannibalism, and making it more like Dragon Age are silliness left for the main-streamers. They're not going to be in Skyrim. However, if we have some fun ideas, I think we should share them as possible ideas for DLCs and Added content.

Now, a lot of guild ideas are being tossed around, some serious, some not so serious, but I think we're over-looking a major facet of life: architecture. A lot of you say you love to roleplay and you don't want to be shoehorned into a role. You don't want to have to be the Chosen One. (I know a significant number of you want to be the chosen one. Meh) However, you are shoe-horned either way in the fact that the offered guils we know are Fighters, Mages, and Thieves. How's about some actual guilds from the middle ages? We've yet to see how crafting will work in Skyrim (other than Alchemy) so I can't suggesting a Smithing Guild or a Leahter-Tanning guild.

Instead I offer a Stone Mason's Guild.

Masonry is an art and a science, with apprentice and master masons making up its ranks. In the Middle Ages, the Masons were highly revered for their art, comissioned to build noble villas, cathedrals, and castles. In Oblivion: the Imperial Sewers, the various forts and towers, and cultural buildings, these are all the realm of a mason. As a mason, you would use alchemy to trasnmute and create various materials for building (perhaps destruction fireballs to bake the bricks). To add more skills to this Guild, we could perhaps involve conjuration in the summoning of servitors to aid in the building projects, instead of laborers.

Quests might involve meeting clients and convincing them to invest in your Guild, pushing out independent competitors, satisfying commisions by collecting supplies for those lovely fetch quests that grace every RPG. As we increase in the ranks, we could be sent out to the frontier, perhaps working for the Imperial armies (what's left of them, following the rise of Titus Mede and the fall of the Empire) to assembly towers and forts, offering strategies to quell the warring cities of the Nords. Finally, we could be rewarded with a keep or schloss of our own 'making,' like those tiny DLCs that added manors and castles and hideouts back in Oblivion's time.

Of course, this would all be in the form of a DLC for Skyrim, or some sort of add-on. If people are interested, I could go into further detail.

Are you a member of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemasonry? :tongue:

Ah... Ummm.. Well, I'm sworn to secrecy, but, ye- bliviongate:

To be realistic it seems like too much work to do for something that wouldn't be as appreciated. Guilds are supposed to have action-filled quests and storylines, it's kind of weird to base that on something like masonry.

Ah, but you see, in the middle ages, Guilds often bumped off competition. Just like the Fighter's guild tried to do with the Blackwood Company, an independent group moving in on their territory. Granted, the Fighter's guild acted for nobler reasons, but you get the idea. It wouldn't be as villianous as the Dark Brotherhood, nor as charitable and kleptomaniac-y as the Thieves' Guild. Rather it would introduce general greed and avarice in the need to dominate a market:

That market being the growing wealth of Nord's nobility and merchants as they conquer areas in Morrowind, High Rock, and Hammerfell, as well as the increasing amount of Dunmer immigrants to the coastal cities, what with much of Morrowind now under the scaly thumb of the Argonians.

With a new market and new buyers, the player would be forced to not only use politics and speech craft to gain the upper-hand, but also dagger and cloak and bribes, as he pursues his lust for knowledge (the art of the masons) and his lust for wealth.

Now, this has nothing to do with the Free Masons, only so far as they are based on building things. This has more to do with medieval guild 'war-fare.' This side of the medieval guild would serve as a fine contrast to the otherwise reserved and calculating side of the Architect.

I'd love a more traditional, business-oriented guild in similar vein to the East Empire company and House Hlaalu.

P.S. My great grandfather was a freemason. It's okay. You can take refuge with me any time you want. :whisper:

apparently you have not read Pillars of the Earth. You'd be surprised how much action and intrigue can surround masonry and architecture.

*Proceeds to hide with Stonefrog. It's the cool team. We've got alcohol and ninjas.* :toughninja: :celebration:

The East Empire Company is another interesting faction. Though, not a guild with specified ranks and the process of apprentice rising to adept and then master, it would offer an -actual- guild experience, with at least some focus on commercialism (as most were) rather than an abstract idea of 'We fight and stuff.' The East Empire Company was involved in Solstheim, the closest we've gotten to Skyrim. There's nothing to say with the fall of the Septim Empire that the company won't have expanded, becoming more military, having to become independent in order to cope with the times. But speculating that far slips into the world of speculation rather than suggestion.

Another guild idea that has to do with commercialism, while we're on the topic, is the Smithing Guild. Could focus in the smithing trait and blunts (you might make swords, but you use a hammer like Da Vinci uses a brush) that would involve treks into mountains to find rare ores amongst monsters, going into abandoned mines and caves, fighting tooth and nail with legendary creatures for the ingredients that protect!

But let's exhaust conversation about masons and whether they're feasible in Skyrim, before moving onto Blacksmithing.

Oh, and thank you, Donkey Cow, for that point! That's exactly right! The government, the clergy, mercenaries! It's all involved!

The only guild I really want is one that has something to do with assassins. Like the Dark Brotherhood. Or Morag-Tong.

Ok I see what you can make of this, and how it could be action and awesome. Still, I prefer to have it like Oblivion - less diverse factions (than, say, Morrowind) and more focus and work on the ones we have. But sure it's a sound idea for once, though.

yes, but I would love a guild that did something other than the typical rpg kill this, steal this. For once, I'd like a quest to go build something or something that's different from what all the quests have been in the TES series.

Not that I think Bethesda would waste the effort, but in Mods we "build our own castles and towns," and I think they could probably make a system (were this idea popular enough) to let us place our own buildings, though in a less complicated manner than modding leads me to believe. We could customize our own castle, rather than have to buy a DLC with some strange Fighter's Guild Fort that apparently becomes our own.

Returning to the realm of possibility, a quest:

Your guild has been comissioned to build a new Chapel of Stendarr, with you supervising the project, and everything seems in play. You had the client, approval from the city's lord, and the money ready to go. But lo and behold! The relic the priest had wanted to build the temple around... it's been stolen! Your entire masonic career hinges on this job! It was your test from apprentice to adept! If this falls through, you'll never be considered for mastery! And all that gold! The gold, gold gold! All lost! What does our Great Architect do?

He follows clues, interrogates the local pub-goers, and it leads him/her to an agent of the rival construction company, that damnable private organization headed by an Imperial Noble, using cheap, Argonian and Khajiit labor! They don't even favor quality! You find a low-level agent of the organization and... creatively question him about your own project, and what he knows. During the beating- interrogation he lets slip that his company may have wanted it gone, to stall the Guild's construction efforts. This leads you on a long road of investigating, following clues, fighting thugs, and tracking down Thieves of the Thieves' Guild to recover the lost artifact: All for the sake of a guild contract.

Later quests might involve bumping off the competition all together.

Well, hell. I write a new quest idea and all of the sudden no one is interested? Bah! :facepalm:

A guild like this would require constant construction projects all over the map to be justifiable. Not feasible, in my book.

Well, it would be in the form of a DLC, with the foundations of new buildings placed where new construction quests would lead you to, or out in the wilderness, as signs of the Guild taking Imperial contracts to build watch towers. In that sense, it wouldn't necessarily require incremental and constant construction, but only the appearance of construction.